Nick Clegg: No one can beat the Conservatives on their own.’
Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Nick Clegg has described Brexit as the result of an “ideological coup” carried out by a powerful group of media owners who have Theresa May “as their hostage”.

In an interview with the Guardian, the former Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister said that Britain was being run by a “curious cabal of old men”, namely the power brokers on Britain’s pro-Brexit newspapers – the Telegraph’s Barclay brothers, the Sun’s Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre.

“What lurks behind Brexit is an ideological coup, in many ways a domestic one. Brexit is a means by which a low-state, low-protection, low-welfare, libertarian approach to governance is seeking to take over the commanding heights of British politics,” he said.

Clegg, now the Lib Dem spokesman on Brexit, said that this was not “conspiracy stuff”.

“You can see it – look at the commentariat in large parts of the Brexit press, look at Tea Party thinktanks in America that are the intellectual inspiration for Brexiteers, look at what they said about Brussels being the fount of all problems because of regulation.”

Describing the media owners as puppet masters, he said they wanted to turn Britain into an offshore economy, calling them a “bunch of old men – not elected by anybody – [with] Theresa May as their hostage”.

And he called on liberal and one-nation Conservatives, centrist Labour politicians and Liberal Democrats to join together to mount an ideological response.

Clegg said those at the centre of British politics had to urgently shift from “grieving to attack” to challenge Brexit-backing Tories on European and domestic policy areas.

“Political parties are not sects,” said Clegg as he promised to work with anyone who sought to challenge the direction of British politics, arguing that Brexit was an “ideological coup” for small-state fanatics.

“No one can beat the Conservatives on their own so it’s not that complicated – we’re condemned to work together,” he said.

“I would welcome and embrace more thinking and writing and talking and speaking amongst liberal Conservatives, one-nation Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, centre-ground Labour folk who want to mount a proper ideological response to that.”

Welcoming Tony Blair’s new Institute for Global Change, which aims to re-energise the centre ground, Clegg said people were spending too much time getting angry and needed to unite on issues such as “housing, in-work poverty and the ageing population”.

Clegg said it was “completely out of the question” for his party to enter a coalition with the Tory party because of hard Brexit, but suggested that a shift back to more tactical voting could provide a comeback for the left of British politics.

“If it becomes obvious next election that the overwhelming task is to destroy the Conservative government – that is umbilically linked to hard Brexit,” he said, then it would be “flamingly obvious” to Labour in the south-west that the Lib Dems had the best chance of victory and to Lib Dems in the north that Labour did.

He argued that the politicians who drove the decision to leave the EU had plans for mass deregulation after Brexit was complete.

His comments came after the Tory remain campaigner Anna Soubry suggested someone ought to get on with creating a “moderate, sensible, forward-thinking” political party.

Clegg then set Twitter alight after he was pictured talking with Labour’s Keir Starmer on the frontbench.

“I just went and asked him a dweeby, legal question. Can’t you do that?” he asked, laughing.

However, Clegg was critical of the shadow Brexit secretary’s position on Brexit.

“[Starmer] has got a fine legal brain but I think the way that the Labour party is handling the politics of this is nothing short of catastrophic. They could be true to their convictions which is they reject the kind of Brexit we are heading towards,” he said.

Clegg argued that Labour was attempting to cater for 100% of voters, a strategy that would disappoint everybody.

He said the party had backed article 50 because it had let the vote be defined by the Daily Mail view of the world that it would be “thwarting the will of the people – it was 24-carat crap”.

However, Clegg said there was much common ground across British political parties “for those who do not believe in this curious hijacking of the commanding heights of politics by an – in many respects – unaccountable elite of small-state fanatics”.

He suggested that Ken Clarke was closer to him than Brexit-supporting Tories, and that cross-party work would not involve a new organisation but “defining our enemy” and seeking to represent the needs of younger people.

“Time is our friend, and time is their enemy,” he said, arguing that during the negotiations people would see that the promises of the leave campaigners were not coming to fruition.

He said it was wrong for Labour and what he called “Guardian-reading circles” to lambast him for joining the Conservatives in a coalition government in 2010.

“It was one of the most short-sighted self-harming things for the left to decimate the centre-left party in the coalition,” he said, claiming that what killed the Lib Dems in the last general election was the Tories’ “powerful and brilliantly targeted” campaign claim that Labour would go into coalition with the SNP.

He said the Tories had a “remorseless nose for power” that made them one of the most successful and cynical parties in the developed world: “Because for them why you wield power is secondary to the act of wielding power.”

Asked if he would encourage his sons to go into politics, Clegg was unequivocal. “No, God no,” he said, claiming it was an “aggressive, dog-eat-dog world”. He also made clear that he would not lead a party again, saying that this was the “final chapter” of his political career.